


Leap of Faith

by Catstaff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Harmony & Co's Lyric Llama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25081294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catstaff/pseuds/Catstaff
Summary: Hermione always had faith in him, always supported him against all odds. Now Harry has the opportunity to support her in return and leaps at the chance.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 3
Kudos: 103
Collections: Lyric Llama





	Leap of Faith

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the lyrics: "They say we're in danger, But I disagree. If proven wrong, shame on me. But you've had faith in me, So I won't shy away. Should it all fall down; You'll have been my favorite mistake." From the song Dangerous by Busta Rhymes for Harmony & Co's Lyric Llama.

“You’ll both come back to the Burrow with the rest of my children and that’s final,” Molly Weasley said firmly. “It’s too dangerous for you to be out on your own, especially given who you are. You know there’s a good chance that some of You-Know-Who’s supporters escaped and they’ll be after you.” She and Ron, plus Harry and Hermione, were in the transfiguration classroom, having remained at Hogwarts to help with repairs for a week following the battle.

Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Weasley, but I wouldn’t be comfortable staying at the Burrow right now. It’s just… too much has happened too quickly. I need some time to get my head together, and I won’t be able to do that here. I’ll forever be grateful that you accepted me into your family as you’ve done, but I need some time alone. Some time without anyone pushing – however gently – for me to do what they want me to do. I think I’ve done more than my share of fulfilling the expectations of others, and I need some time to figure out what it is that I want from life, instead of just going along with what the entire Wizarding world seems to think I ought to do.” He didn’t say it outright, but he also didn’t want to be in the same house as Ginny, who was already pushing him to get back together even though he no longer had any romantic feelings for her. Sometimes he wondered if he ever had them, or if he’d simply gone with the flow back then given that Ron and Hermione seemed to be getting together.

“And I need to go to Australia and find my parents,” Hermione said firmly. “I can’t leave them there forever, after all. It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t at least give them the choice between staying wherever they’ve settled or returning home to England.”

“Who cares about them?” Ron butted in. “They’re only muggles. I want you to stay here, Herms. We can plan our wedding. Maybe even get married before the end of summer.”

Hermione slowly raised an eyebrow as she turned to look at her boyfriend of a week. “They’re only muggles? ONLY muggles? They’re my PARENTS! If you really think they don’t matter, you have more in common with Draco Malfoy than I would have believed – and I most certainly will not be marrying you! When I said you had the emotional range of a teaspoon, I obviously overestimated! You have the emotional range of a salt spoon! Oh, and just a suggestion for the future, if you manage to find a new girlfriend someday, you might want to actually propose to the lady before telling her to move in with your family to start planning the wedding.” She whirled around and stomped out of the room, the door slamming behind her.

Ron shook his head. “Mental, that one,” he said. “She’ll come back soon enough, when she sees that I’m right.”

“Except you’re wrong, Ronald Bilius Weasley,” Molly snapped. While she’d been thrilled to see her two youngest pairing up with Harry and Hermione, after nearly ruining her relationship with Bill over his decision to marry Fleur Delacour, she’d vowed not to interfere with the love lives of the rest of her brood. If Ronald wanted to win Hermione back, he’d have to do it himself. Which didn’t mean she couldn’t give him a piece of her mind for his crass remarks, of course.

“I’ll make sure Hermione’s okay,” Harry said quietly, slipping out after her. As the door closed behind him, he could hear Molly’s strident tones rising as she delivered a personal Howler to her youngest son.

He caught up to Hermione halfway to the Hogwarts gates. “I can’t believe he’d say something like that,” she said with a sob, throwing herself into his arms. “I thought he finally grew up.”

Harry rubbed her back gently, letting her cry. “Shh. I’ve got you. We’ll figure things out somehow.”

She calmed down faster than he’d expected and gave him a watery smile. “Thank you for being here for me,” she said, punctuating it with a hiccup. She blushed.

He grinned but managed to avoid laughing out loud. He didn’t know which was cuter, that squeaky little hic! or the blush after she made it. “Always, Hermione, always. Come on, we can go to Grimmauld Place for now,” he said. “It’s as safe a place as any, and we’ll be all right there while we make our plans going forward.”

“All right,” she said. The two apparated away, reappearing in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. 

Harry put the kettle on first thing, then dug out some parchment and a self-inking quill. “Here. You start listing out what’s needed to go to Australia for however long you think it’ll take. I’ll fix us a bite for tea and then we can figure out the best way to do what needs doing.”

Hermione gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Harry.” By the time the kettle boiled, she had five or six items jotted down on her list. She didn’t even look up when he put a cup of tea and a plate of ham and cheese sandwiches in front of her. She did pick up a sandwich, nibbling absently while tapping the quill lightly down her list. Finally, she set the quill down and picked up the teacup, taking a deep drink before saying, “And thanks again. This is good.”

“Anytime,” Harry said with a smile. “So, what needs doing?”

“More than I hoped,” she said. “I’ve got to renew my passport before I can go anywhere – I’d rather travel by plane than by international portkey, especially if I might be bringing them back. So I’ll need to pack carefully, plan for all sorts of weather conditions. We’re just coming into summer here, so Australia will be heading into winter, but it’s also large enough that there could be very different conditions in one part of the country compared to another part. Like, the town of Darwin is within the tropics and will likely be quite warm by our standards even in winter, but Canberra looks as though it will come close to matching a London winter.”

He nodded as he sipped his own tea. “It’s hard to picture a country big enough to have that sort of range of weather all within one season.”

She grabbed another sandwich and took a bite. After swallowing, she said, “The biggest problem will be finding them, of course. I planted the idea of them settling in Melbourne when I obliviated them and gave them their current identities, but there’s no telling if they stayed there or not. Obviously, that’s where I’ll look first, but if they spent a while there and decided they didn’t care for the weather or some other aspect of the place, they could have gone elsewhere. I just hope it doesn’t take longer than six months or so to find them, or I’ll have to try to get a work visa.”

Harry came to a snap decision. “No you won’t,” he said. “I’ll go with you and help with expenses.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested. “What about auror training? And you shouldn’t spend all your money on me; you might need it in the future.”

“I know I don’t have to, I want to,” he said, reaching out and placing his hand over hers on the table. “First of all, I really don’t know if I want to be an auror anymore. I’m tired of fighting, and I certainly don’t want all of wizarding Britain assuming I’m going to save them from any new dark lords that might pop up in the next few decades. I get that the Death Eaters and Voldemort scared a lot of people, but honestly, every witch and wizard in this country carries a lethal weapon of their own. If even half of them had chosen to fight back, the first war wouldn’t have gotten so out-of-hand that they were only saved by luck and whatever my mother did that protected me – and they wouldn’t have expected a child of eleven or even a young man of seventeen to save their collective arses a second time.”

“Language, Harry,” she said automatically. “But you’re right, far too many people just sat back and did nothing to help. I can’t blame you for thinking twice about becoming an auror under the circumstances, because you’re also right that if you’re around, most of them probably won’t even try to combat a new threat because of course Harry Potter will handle it. But if you’re not going to be an auror, you’ll have even more need for the money.”

“No, money won’t be a problem,” he said. “Remember I vanished for a bit after Fred’s funeral? I went to Gringotts to see about making sort of restitution for the dragon and the damage to the building. It turns out that between the Potter main vault and the Black vaults that I inherited from Sirius, I’ve got enough money to last easily sixty or seventy years, maybe more if I budgeted carefully. And that’s after paying said restitution. Not quite enough to retire immediately, but more than enough to fund this trip and still have plenty to live on while I decide what I want to be when I grow up.” 

Hermione couldn’t help but smile at that. “I suppose you did get your life-stages a bit mixed up, didn’t you? From what you’ve said, you were doing a teenager’s lot of chores while in primary school, then expected to save the world while still in secondary; no wonder you’re wanting a bit of a childhood now.”

He grinned a bit, seeing her smile, but then grew serious. “Please, Hermione, let me do this for you? You’ve been there for me so many times, I honestly don’t know if I’d be alive right now but for you. For once, I want to be there for you the way you’ve always been there for me.” He paused and added, “I can’t get my family back, but you hopefully can. I don’t want you to lose your family if I can help in any way.”

She couldn’t resist the pleading in those green eyes of his. “All right,” she capitulated. “You can fund the trip.” She smiled softly and gave his hand, still covering hers, a gentle squeeze. “I really do appreciate the support,” she said. “I was pretty nervous about doing this alone.”

Over the next month, Hermione guided Harry through the process of getting their passports and the appropriate visas for their trip. They both opened bank accounts at Barclay’s, for the convenience of being able to use their debit cards worldwide. He persuaded her into letting him purchase business-class tickets for their flight, reasoning that if they were going to spend that much time in a flying metal tube, they might as well be as comfortable as possible in the process. As Harry needed an entirely new wardrobe, they spent a fair amount of time in Harrods. They also made a quick trip to Hogwarts to ask Professor McGonagall for some help in permanently transfiguring some of his winter-weight wizarding robes into the equivalent muggle attire, it being the wrong season to shop for winter clothing in Britain. 

Ron sent Hermione a note two weeks into the month, a halfhearted apology for insulting her parents along with a strong hint that once she found them, she should come back and marry him then. Once she finished shrieking her outrage at his attitude, she wrote back telling him in no uncertain terms that they were through, they were just too incompatible and it was better ended before they got married and made each other miserable for life. To her own surprise, she felt more relieved than saddened by the decision.

Over that same month, Harry found himself growing more and more aware of his best friend. He found himself smiling whenever she gnawed her lower lip while puzzling out some problem or other. He enjoyed watching her as she organised her notes and lists in preparation for their trip, and especially liked how her eyes lit up whenever she ticked off another item from the to-do list, putting them one step closer to leaving. He discovered that he’d become inordinately fond of her hugs, and wondered if she’d ever consider dating him in the future. He also found that the scent of her hair products made him feel safe. It helped that they frequently ended up sharing a bed to sleep, to help stave off the nightmares they both suffered from.

At the same time, Hermione started to notice and appreciate how Harry liked to do little things for her. He nearly always had tea ready by the time she was showered and dressed each morning. Whenever she climbed the ladder in the library to hunt out a book on a high shelf, he always held it steady and offered her a hand coming back down – all without either trying to get a peek up her skirt (if she wasn’t wearing jeans) or putting his hands anywhere inappropriate. While he let her take the lead in most of the planning, if he disagreed with something she wanted, such as her original plan of flying economy, he told her so respectfully and explained why he thought so. And most of all, the scent of his shaving products made her feel safe. It helped that they frequently ended up sharing a bed to sleep, to help stave off the nightmares they both suffered from.

On the day of their departure, Hermione couldn’t help but grin at Harry, who was almost bouncing in anticipation as they went through the check-in process and through to their gate at Heathrow. He grinned back, his green eyes alight with excitement. “You’ve been to France, right, Hermione?” he asked. “Did you fly or take the ferry?”

“The ferry,” she answered. “This will be my first plane trip as well.” Pulling him close to whisper in his ear, she told him, “I brought Dreamless Sleep potions for each of us. I’m pretty sure that even in business class, the seats won’t make down into beds big enough to share and I didn’t want to risk either of us having a screaming nightmare mid-flight.”

“Oh… I hadn’t even thought about that,” he said. “That’s a good idea, though, you’re right.” He perked up again after a moment, looking out at the planes on the taxiways and runways. “Can you just imagine Mr. Weasley here, looking at all this?”

Hermione giggled; she couldn’t help it. “Oh, that’s just so wrong,” she laughed. “Can you just imagine how many Obliviators would be needed in his wake? He’d be poking and prodding at everything from the luggage conveyor belt to the cash registers at the duty-free shops.”

“Oh, I know! And he’d be pestering everyone, wanting to know how the planes stay up. Not that I quite understand it myself,” Harry said with a chuckle, “but I trust the science even if I don’t quite get it.”

They boarded when called, finding their seats on the upper deck. With her fear of heights, Hermione let Harry have the window seat. They stowed their carry-ons in the overhead bin and settled in for the trip. The Dreamless Sleep did its work, letting them both get a decent night’s sleep despite one rather demanding passenger’s loud demands for another beer every hour or so. Upon reaching Melbourne, they filed off the plane with everyone else and went through Customs, getting their passports stamped and being welcomed to Australia by the agents on duty.

Following their plan, they checked into a hotel and took a couple of days to acclimate to the time difference. Now that they were actually in Australia, Hermione turned into a nervous wreck, fretting that they wouldn’t find her parents, that she wouldn’t be able to reverse the obliviations she’d done to them, and that they wouldn’t forgive her for obliviating them. 

As she started to tear up, Harry knew he’d need to do something drastic to get her mind off of her worries for a time, so he did something he hadn’t intended to do until after they’d found her parents: he pulled her into his arms and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. He trusted her to be gentle about knocking him back if she didn’t consider him fanciable. 

She froze for a long moment, long enough to make him pull back, afraid he’d offended her. But she just blinked up at him. “Wh… what was that for?”

“Because I wanted to,” he admitted. “I don’t want to lose our friendship, but, well, I’ve realised that I like you as more than just a friend. I think maybe I have for a while, but was too dumb to see it.”

“You’re not dumb,” she said. “Inexperienced, maybe, and I know you often shied away from the girls at Hogwarts since most of them just wanted The-Boy-Who-Lived and not Harry. But why me, why now? And what about Ginny?”

Harry sighed. “Why not you?” he said. “I’ve thought you beautiful since fourth year and the Yule Ball, even though I didn’t see your outward beauty until then. But I’ve always admired your inner beauty. You know, your kindness, your intelligence, your loyalty and bravery. The timing, well, I didn’t want you worrying yourself sick tonight so I did the first thing I thought of to get you to think about something else for a bit. As for Ginny, I don’t know that I’d have even dated her but for two reasons – one, that I thought you and Ron were about to get together at that party when she jumped on me and kissed me, and two, that she did jump on me and kiss me. I couldn’t think of a way to tell her no without embarrassing her and I didn’t want to do that. Dumbledore’s funeral made a good excuse to break up, but practically as soon as the battle ended, she started dropping dragon-sized hints that she expected an engagement ring before summer’s end. I suppose she’s a nice enough girl and all, but she looks way too much like pictures of my mum for comfort, plus she’s awfully used to getting her own way. I have a feeling whoever marries Ginny will end up henpecked half to death the way Mr. Weasley is, because Ginny’s learned from her mother that nagging will get her what she wants as long as she keeps it up loud enough and long enough.” 

Hermione wrinkled her nose. “Ew. I hadn’t even thought about the looks thing, and you’re right. She does look quite similar to those pictures of your mother. And I hate to admit it, but you’re probably also right in that she’ll turn into a shrew if her husband doesn’t give in to her every whim. A bit like Ron, now that I think on it.” 

“I… didn’t offend you, did I?” Harry asked. “I mean, kissing you like that, especially since it’s only been about a month since you broke up with him.”

“No, you didn’t offend me,” she said, still looking shocked, but smiling a little at the question. “But you did surprise me. I… well, sometimes I think maybe I tried to fancy Ron more than I really did because I didn’t think you saw me as someone you might fancy. I mean, I’m just that bushy-haired, bucktoothed, know-it-all. A good sort to have as a friend and research assistant, but not girlfriend material.”

He lifted a hand to tug gently on her curls. “Hey now, I don’t let anyone talk about my girlfriend like that,” he said. “You fixed your teeth years ago, not that they were all that bad to begin with, but if it made you more confident in that pretty smile, I’m glad you did it. You’re smart, yes, and while you did come across as a bit of a know-it-all when you were eleven, you grew out of it. I’m sure I had faults back then that I’ve grown out of as well. I hope I grew out of them, anyway.” He grinned and added, “Also, I adore your hair. It’s always so shiny and bouncy. Besides, it would definitely be a case of pot-meet-kettle if I was to complain about your hair being a bit difficult to manage.” He ruffled his own bird’s nest of hair. “I’ll grant we’d be dooming any future children to crazy hair, but we can cross that bridge when and if we come to it.”

“Oh, Harry,” she said, before leaning up to kiss him again. “I do want this. I’m just scared I’ll lose you completely if it doesn’t work out. I don’t know if I could take that.”

“We can take things as slowly as you want, Hermione,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you either. But seriously, if this is a mistake, it’s the best one I’ve ever made. I know I’m attracted to you, and I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“I think I’m falling in love with you, too,” she whispered.

“Then we will make this work,” he promised, kissing the top of her head. 

They still had any number of problems to handle, not the least of which would be finding her parents and restoring their memories. But they both knew that whatever the future would bring, they would face it together.


End file.
